Fic: It’s A Knockout

Title: It’s A KnockoutAuthor:badly_knittedCharacters: Ianto, Jack, Owen, Tosh, Gwen, Alien.Rating: PGSpoilers: Nada.Summary: Torchwood’s latest alien visitor proves to be a bit of a handful.Word Count: 1040Written For: Prompt 041 – Down For The Count at fandomweekly.Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.

They’d all believed the alien was down for the count, and by rights, it should have been; it wasn’t that big, no taller than Owen, if more than twice as wide, and they’d shot enough tranquillizer into it to put an elephant out for a week. When the fifth dart had hit it and it had finally keeled over with a thud so heavy they all felt it through their feet, they’d breathed a collective sigh of relief and immediately started preparing it for transportation back to the Hub.

It had taken everyone working together to tie it securely and load it in the back of SUV, which had dipped alarmingly from the weight. Owen had speculated that the world it came from probably had a higher gravity than earth, which accounted for the creature’s dense body mass and relatively squat frame. It probably also accounted for the ineffectiveness of the tranquillizers, and it might have been better if they’d shot it a few more times, just to be certain, but it was easy to be wise in hindsight.

Honestly, they were lucky it had remained sedated during the journey, especially since they’d got stuck in the morning rush hour traffic en route, because having it go on the rampage in the confines of the packed vehicle… well, that didn’t bear thinking about. It probably would have resulted in a massacre.

Arriving back at the Hub, they’d lugged the creature onto one of the anti-grav trolleys Torchwood had acquired over the years, and steered it to the autopsy bay so that Owen could take scans and tissue samples, and document it for their records before bunging it in one of the extra strong, triple reinforced cells on level six while they figured out what to do with it. Well, that had been the plan anyway.

Owen had vetoed transferring the new resident to his autopsy table, on the grounds that it might not take the weight and he didn’t want to have to requisition a new table because the paperwork was a bitch. Ianto sympathised after a fashion, knowing he’d have to check the SUV’s suspension in the near future. It could stand up to some pretty extreme wear and tear, but everything had is limits and it had been making some ominous grinding noises on the drive back.

Anyway, all that was beside the point; they all had other things on their minds right now, mostly because the moment Owen had stuck a needle in their guest in order to get a sample of its blood, it had woken up, and it wasn’t happy.

Owen had been thrown bodily across the autopsy bay and KO’d when the creature had struck him, so he was out of action. Jack resorted to fisticuffs, but all his roundhouse swing got him was a broken hand. Ianto could have told him that would happen; the alien’s muscles were as hard as rocks over most of its body. Gwen and Tosh were more sensible, grabbing the tranquillizer guns and opening fire on the alien, but hitting a moving target in a confined space turned out to be a lot harder than you might think. Like shooting fish in a barrel? Not so much. All they succeeded in doing was tranquillising an already unconscious Owen, which was a bit unfortunate, but accidents happen.

Ianto, being Ianto, behaved perfectly logically, if you happened to be Ianto Jones, arming himself and striding bravely into the fray in defence of Jack, who, crowded against the wall by the alien, was in imminent danger of having more than just his hand broken.

You’d have thought that a gun would have been the most logical weapon to choose, but… well, flying bullets would have been even more hazardous in a confined space than tranquillizer darts, and getting hit by one would have presented a far smaller likelihood of recovery, especially when the only person available with medical training was likely to be unconscious for several hours, and more than a little woozy when he did eventually wake up.

Besides, anything can be a weapon if you know how to handle it, and hockey sticks are no exception. Have you ever seen the damage that can be wrought on players by the opposing team? It can be a brutal sport. Ianto would never have claimed to be an expert at hockey, like all good Welshmen he was more into rugby, but needs must when the devil drives, and the hockey stick was right there from the last time he and Jack had occasion to use it for… something, so he grabbed it. After all, it wasn’t like he hadn’t wielded it effectively before, on that skittering, living metal glove a few years back. His opponent this time was rather larger and more formidable, but the same principle applied. Hit something hard enough and in the right place…

Whacking it around the knees and shins slowed it down a bit, hitting it over the head just made it even more annoyed, but a solid blow to the jaw took it down like it had been poleaxed. The resounding crash as it hit the tiled floor was quite impressive. The hockey stick snapped in half though, which was a shame; they’d have to get a new one.

“Bigger they are, harder they fall,” Ianto said with a shrug. “Must have a glass jaw.”

Jack went over to the fallen alien, cradling his healing hand. “I think you killed it.”

“What? Can’t have!” Ianto checked it himself. “Nope, still breathing, just out for the count. Come on, let’s get it into its temporary home before it wakes up and we have to go through all this again.”

“What about Owen?” Tosh asked.

“We’ll deal with him after we lock our guest away,” Jack said firmly, helping Ianto to roll the heavy body back onto the anti-grav trolley. “He’s not going anywhere.”

There was still the problem of what they were going to do with the creature, locking it away was only a temporary solution, but they could figure that out later. Right now they just needed to get it secured so they could see to their own injuries. Everything else would have to wait.